of them all. 'We know him,' she cried; 'he was here with us; it was my
sleeve that he wore, and he is the knight that I love. I knew that he
was the best of knights!'
"'You know him?' said Gawain. 'Then tell me who he was, so that I may
tell the King.'
"Then Elaine told him that she did not know his name, and she told him
all that she did know about him, how he had come there and how he had
promised to wear her sleeve, and how he had taken her brother's shield
and had left his own with her.
"'Will you let me see his shield, then?' Gawain asked. 'I know so many
shields that I might tell who he was by that.'
"So Elaine brought the shield and showed it to Gawain, and said: 'do you
know the knight by this?'
"'Yes, yes,' said Gawain, 'indeed, indeed, I know him; I have known him
for many years, and he is the best knight of the world. He is Sir
Lancelot of the Lake.'
"And when she heard this, Elaine could not say anything, but could only
stand before Gawain, blushing and trembling again, that the great Sir
Lancelot had worn her token at the tournament.
"'But I fear,' said Gawain, 'that we must all be sad for this, for the
knight who wore that red sleeve with the pearls got a dreadful wound,
and now he may be dead or dying.'
"Then Elaine begged her father to let her go to find Lancelot. And he
saw that she loved him so much that it would be better for her to go and
try to find him and help him, if he needed her, than to stay at home and
fret about him, not knowing whether he was alive or dead. And so Elaine
left Astolat to seek for Lancelot. She went first toward Camelot, and
before she reached the city she met her brother, Lavaine. He did not see
her at first, but she called to him, and she was in such haste that she
would not wait to tell him how their father was, or why she had come,
but asked him at once where Sir Lancelot was.
"'How do you know,' he said, 'that he is Sir Lancelot?'
"'It was Sir Gawain that told us,' she answered; 'he came to Astolat and
saw his shield and knew it. Where is he?'
"'In a hermitage, not far from here.'
"'Then he is not dead?'
"'No,' said Lavaine, 'he was wounded and almost killed, but the hermit
is a skilful man and knows what to do with wounds, and he hopes that he
will live.'
"'Take me to him, then,' said Elaine.
"So Lavaine led her to the hermit's cell. And when she saw Lancelot
lying there, with his face thin and white, his eyes large and dark, and
all his strength gone from him, she ran to him and fell upon her knees
beside his bed and hid her face in the pillow, and for a few moments she
could not see or speak or move. Then she rose and looked at him again
and put her hand on his forehead, and then she went and spoke to the
hermit and at last she came and sat down beside Lancelot. And after
that she scarcely left the cell till he was well, and in all the weary
days that passed no one ever saw her tremble or shed a tear, and she
never slept when Lancelot needed her, but she was always there to nurse
him and care for him and help the hermit to cure him, and if he ever
smiled at her or called her by her name or reached out his hand and
touched hers she was happy.
"But Gawain had gone back to the court and had told the King and all the
rest that the knight who wore the red sleeve was Lancelot. And then Bors
had set off to find him too. And Lancelot knew that Bors would come to
find him and he told Lavaine to watch for him in the town, and so he was
soon brought to the cell. And when he and Lancelot had talked for a
little while and Lancelot had asked him about the King and the Queen and
all who were at court, Bors said: 'Is this girl whom I see about you the
one whom they call Elaine of Astolat?'
"'Yes,' said Lancelot, 'and I cannot make her go away. I tell her that
she keeps herself here too close, but she will not rest or leave me.'
"'Why should she leave you?' said Bors. 'She loves you, they say, and
here she proves it; why can you not love her too?'
"'No,' Lancelot answered, 'I wish that it could be, but it never can. I
shall be grateful to her always, she has done so much for me, and I
shall always be her knight, but I can do no more.'
"'It is for you alone to say,' said Bors, 'but I am sorry for her and
for you too.'
"They had spoken low, but Elaine was near and she could not help hearing
a part of what they said. When Bors stole a glance at her he saw that
her face was white, but there were no tears in her eyes, and when there
was anything for her to do for Lancelot she did it just as before, and,
just as before, she never wanted to sleep or to be away from him.
"So Lancelot grew slowly stronger, and after a long time he could sit
upon a horse again, and at last the hermit told him that he needed no
more of his care. Then it was agreed that Lancelot and Bors and Elaine
and Lavaine should ride together to Astolat. There Lancelot was to rest
and get his shield, which was still there, and then go on with Bors and
Lavaine to Westminster. So they came to Astolat and spent the night,
and in the morning Lancelot, Bors, and Lavaine were ready to ride on
their way. Then Lancelot said to Elaine: 'You have done more for me
than I can ever repay. I shall never forget you and always and
everywhere that I go I shall be your knight, and anything that I can
ever do for you I will do gladly.' And Elaine knew that Lancelot could
never do the one thing that she wished him to do for her--to love her.
"And after they were gone her father saw that she grew paler and
thinner, day by day. Her father and her brother Torre tried to amuse her
and cheer her and make her think less of Lancelot, but she thought of
him all day, and when she slept she dreamed of him. She did not sleep
much. Every morning, before the sun rose, she was up and was looking
out from the tower. Sometimes she looked away toward London, where
Lancelot was, or where she thought that he was, and sometimes she would
look away toward Camelot, where she had been with him. But at last she
could not get up to look out from her tower any more. She could not
leave her bed, but she lay there awake all day and much of the night;
she talked with her father or her brother a little, and for the rest of
the time she thought and dreamed of Lancelot. And one day she told her
father that she knew that she should live for only a little while more.
'And now,' she said, 'you must write a letter, just as I shall tell you.
And when I am dead, dress me the best you can and lay me on a couch and
put this letter in my hand. Then put the couch, and me upon it, into a
boat, and let the boat be rowed down the river to Westminster, where
Lancelot and the King and the Queen are.'
"All this she made her father promise to do. Then she told him what to
write for her in the letter, and a little while after that she died.
And her father did all that he had promised.
"One day King Arthur and Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot stood at a
window of the palace at Westminster, looking out upon the Thames. And
there they saw a little boat, all covered over with black and purple
silk, and with only one man to row it. And the boat came straight on
till it touched the shore near the palace. 'It is a strange-looking
boat,' said the King; 'let us go down and see what it is.'
"So they all went down and looked into the boat, and there they saw the
dead Elaine, lying on a couch covered with silk and cloth of gold. Then
the Queen saw the letter in her hand and took it and opened it and saw
that it was to Lancelot. But when she gave it to him Lancelot gave it
to the King and asked him to read it. And the letter said? 'To the
best knight of the world, Sir Lancelot of the Lake: I who bring you this
letter was Elaine of Astolat. I have died, Sir Lancelot, because you
could not love me. Now I beg that you will pray for my soul and will
bury me as I ought to be buried.'
"When the King had read this letter none of them spoke at first. Then
the Queen said: 'Lancelot, could you not do her some little kindness, to
make her sorrow less, so that she might live?'
"'She would have nothing but my love,' said Lancelot. 'I could not give
her that if I would, for true love, such as she should have had, must
come of itself, and cannot be compelled.'
"So the next day Elaine was buried as if she had been a queen, and
Lancelot and the King and the Queen and the knights of the Round Table
were there to see it done. And the boat that had brought her down the
river went back up the river toward Astolat."
[Illustration: Stonehenge]
*CHAPTER VII*
*THE GIANTS' DANCE*
Instead of going from Winchester straight back to London, we took a
little run across to Salisbury. It was not so much that we wanted to
see Salisbury, though it is a pretty place and has a fine cathedral, but
I wanted to go to Stonehenge. To look at Stonehenge, I think, brings
one nearer to the history and the legend of ancient Britain than
anything else that I have ever seen. And if Stonehenge were nothing at
all it would still be worth going to, for the ride to it from Salisbury
is one of the prettiest in all England. There is no such remarkable
scenery, perhaps, as is to be found in many another place, but on that
day when we rode out there the fields were fairly blazing with flowers,
red and yellow and purple, and the little gardens were almost too full
of them to hold them all without spilling. It was just a free, open,
country ride, with everything around looking peaceful and sweet and
beautiful and happy.
And when you take that ride, if you trust to a driver who knows the way
and where you ought to go, he will bring you soon to Old Sarum. It is a
hill, with a thick double wall of earth and a ditch around it, and it
was a Roman town once. Perhaps it was a British town or stronghold
before that. It reminded us a little of Cadbury Castle, but it is a
good deal bigger. It had a cathedral in it once, but for some reason or
other the people began to get tired of living in it and moved down and
made the town of Salisbury, and there a new cathedral was built, and Old
Sarum came to be nothing at all any more but a great hilltop, with its
walls and its ditch around it.
From Old Sarum we went on to Amesbury. I told the driver that I wanted
to stay there for a little while. I think he meant to make a little
stay, whether I had mentioned it or not, for he got ready to do it with
less explanation than it usually takes to get a driver to do anything he
is not used to. He stopped at the little hotel and gave the horse a
drink, and we gave him enough to get something to drink for himself.
Then we walked on toward the church and told him to follow us in a
little while.
We had walked about in the churchyard for only a minute when we saw a
man coming toward us. He proved to be the vicar, who had seen us and
was coming to show us the church. He did show it to us and told us a
great many interesting things about it which I cannot remember well
enough to repeat them here. But I do remember that it was so old that I
decided that there must have been a church here in King Arthur's time,
and that perhaps some part of this very one was standing then.
"But where is the old abbey?" I asked. "Are there not some ruins of that
left?"
We were outside the church now and were looking about at the fields and
the trees. "Oh, no," the vicar said, "there is nothing left of the
abbey now. It was very near where that large house is now. That is the
house of Sir Edmund Antrobus. We can come nearer and look at it, if you
like." So we went nearer and looked at it, and it was a handsome house,
and then we went and stood on a little bridge across the Avon. It was a
shady place and the water was clear, so that we could see the trout
swimming in it, and we looked down the river under a green arch of trees
that grew on the sides of the stream and sent their branches to meet
above it. "I should like you to remember this place," I said, "because
Queen Guinevere lived here for a long time. It is not time yet for me
to tell you how or why, but I will tell you when the time comes, and
till then I want you to remember how the place looks. Remember these
fields and this river and these trees. I don't know, of course, whether
they looked the same then, but they may have been not so very different.
So think of Queen Guinevere sometimes standing on a bridge, just as we
are now, or on the bank of the river, and looking down into just such
clear water and up at just such cool, green, spreading trees. Remember
that she lived over there where Sir Edmund Antrobus lives now, and that
she walked many a morning, it is likely, across these very fields, to a
church that stood where the church is now. That is all. Remember it
till we come to the story about it."
By the time we came out to the road the driver was waiting for us and
wondering what we had found to keep us so long. We got into the
carriage and went on again, and nothing happened till we got to
Stonehenge. Now I know that you don't want me to describe Stonehenge to
you. If you want to know a great deal more than you do about it, you
can find it in a good many big and learned books. What I wish I could
do would be to make you see it, and I cannot do that. It is not much to
tell about, but it is a wonderful thing to see. It seems to me to mean
so much, standing there, so lonely, in the middle of Salisbury
Plain--that great circle of half-smoothed stones--grand, sad, silent,
older than history--a solid, real, noble thing, left to us from a time
out of which we have little else but fairy tales. It was a huge circle
of stones once, square pillars set on end and big blocks laid across
them. Now many of them are lying on the ground, where they fell so long
ago that some of them are half buried in it. Some way off from the
circle is another tall stone, that they say the devil once threw at a
monk. He was such a good man that the devil could not hurt him, but it
struck his foot and took the print of his heel, and the print is there
now, to prove the story. In the morning of the day of the summer when
the sun goes highest in the sky, people come here to see it rise. I
have never been here then, but they say that on that morning, if you
stand over across the circle and look through one of the great stone
gateways, you will see the sun rise exactly over the point of this stone
that the devil threw at the monk.
"I am sorry," I said, "that I cannot tell you the history of Stonehenge,
but I can tell you the story of it, if you care to hear it."
To be sure Helen cared to hear it.
"We shall have to go back, then," I said, "to a time long before King
Arthur was born. Lud was the King of England. It was for him that
London was named. Perhaps the two names do not sound very much alike to
you, but you know names will get a good deal twisted, the best you can
do. Lud had a brother named Levelys, who had gone over to France and
married a princess and had become King of France. And about that time
King Lud and his people began to have a great deal of trouble. There
were three things that troubled them especially. The first was a race
of people called the Coranians. I don't know where these Coranians came
from or what they did to make themselves so troublesome, but there is no
doubt that, for some reason or other, they did not get on well with
Lud's people. And the worst of it was that there seemed to be no way to
get rid of them. The reason was that they had such good ears. For they
could hear anything that was said anywhere on the island, no matter how
softly it was spoken, if the wind was the right way. And so no plan
against them could ever be talked over without their finding out all
about it.
"And the second trouble was a noise, a horrible scream, that was heard
in every house in England on the eve of every May Day. It was so loud
and so fearful that it frightened people half to death, and it went
through them like a knife, and it chilled their blood and filled them
with horror, and some of them went mad because of it.
"And the third trouble was that the King never could keep anything to
eat in the house. No matter how much provision there was at night, it
was all gone the next morning, and nobody could find out what became of
it.
"Now, it occurred to King Lud that his brother Levelys was a very wise
man, and that it would be worth while to go to France and see him and
ask him if he could tell what ought to be done about all these troubles.
So he got ready a fleet, very quietly, so that the Coranians should know
as little as possible about it, and sailed toward France. And when his
brother heard that he was coming he got ready a fleet too, and sailed
from France to meet him. When they met they were very glad to see each
other, and they got ready to talk about King Lud's troubles. Levelys
was so wise that he knew just what Lud had come for, without being told,
so he tried to find a way for them to talk without the Coranians hearing
them. And he had a horn made of brass, and he thought that if they
talked through that they could not be heard even by such ears as the
Coranians had.
"But when they began to talk through it they found that whatever either
of them said into it nothing would come out but angry and hostile words.
Then Levelys knew that a demon had got into the horn. So he poured wine
through the horn and drove the demon out. Then they found that they
could hear through the horn much better. Levelys talked through the
horn and told Lud that he would give him some insects that would kill
the Coranians. He must put them in water and then he must call all the
people of the island together and scatter the water over them. It would
kill all the Coranians, he said, and it would not harm Lud's own people.
"As for the second trouble, that of the dreadful noise, Levelys said
that it was caused by two dragons, that were fighting. 'When you go
home,' he said, 'you must measure your island and find the exact middle
of it. There you must dig a pit, and in the pit you must put a cauldron
of the best mead, and you must cover the top of the cauldron with satin.
Then you must watch till you see the two dragons flying in the air and
fighting together. After a time they will grow weary with fighting and
they will drop down upon the satin and sink into the cauldron. Then
they will drink all the mead that there is in it and go to sleep. After
that you must fold the covering of satin around them and bury them in
the strongest place that you have.
"'And the third trouble,' Levelys went on, 'the disappearing of all your
food, is caused by a great enchanter, who comes and carries it away.
And the reason that nobody who watches ever sees him is that he casts
spells over all of them and makes them sleep. But you yourself must
watch, and you must have a cauldron filled with cold water beside you,
and when you feel like sleeping you must get into the cauldron and the
cold water will keep you awake.'
"When he had heard all this Lud went home. And the first thing that he
did was to call all the people together, as his brother had told him.
Then he sprinkled the water with the insects in it over all the people
and it killed all the Coranians and did no harm to his own people.
"Then he measured the island and found that the very middle of it was in
Oxford. You can measure it yourself, on the map, if you want to find
out whether the middle of it is really in Oxford. I don't say that it
is, only that that was what Lud found. But I suppose he must have been
right about it, for the rest of the experiment worked perfectly. That
is to say, he dug the pit and put the cauldron in the pit and the mead
in the cauldron, and the satin over the cauldron, and waited to see the
fight of the dragons. And the dragons came and fought and fell down
into the cauldron and drank up the mead and slept, and Lud covered them
with the satin and buried them in Snowdon, which is a great mountain in
Wales. I am sorry that we cannot go to Snowdon at present, for I know
that it must be worth seeing.
"And finally Lud made such a great feast that there was sure to be a
good deal of it left, and then he sat up to see what would become of it.
He put on his armor and sat down and waited, and by and by he began to
hear such sweet music that he could scarcely help going to sleep. But
he got into the cauldron of cold water which he had ready, and that kept
him awake. And at last there came a great man, dressed all in armor and
carrying a big basket. He began to put the food into the basket and Lud
began to wonder how he could do it, for it seemed to him that there was
a great deal more of it than the basket could ever hold. But the man put
it all in and then started to go away with it. Then Lud stopped him and
made him fight with him. And Lud beat him and would not grant him mercy
till he promised to be Lud's servant and to restore the value of all
that he had ever taken from him.
"Now we come to the second part of the story. To get to it we have to
come down a good many years, to the time when Merlin, the great magician
and wise man of King Arthur's court, was a boy. We almost always think
of him as an old man, with white hair and a long, white beard. But he
was a boy once, just like anybody else. And a wonderful thing about it
was that he knew just as much more than anybody else in the world when
he was a boy as he did when he was an old man.
"There was a King of England named Vortigern. He had no right to be King
of England, but he was. King Constantine had died not long ago, and had
left three sons. They were Constans, Pendragon, and Uther. Vortigern,
being very powerful at that time, had had Constans made King and he
himself had become his chief adviser. Then he had contrived to get
Constans killed and had been crowned as King himself. Pendragon and
Uther were too young then to rule, and those who had the care of them
had fled with them to France, because they knew that Vortigern would
kill them too, if they stayed in England. And in France the princes
lived and grew up to be young men.
"While they were doing that, Vortigern was having a good deal of trouble
in trying to govern the kingdom that did not belong to him. He did it
so badly that the people turned against him, and he had many enemies
from abroad besides. At last he called his wise men together and they
told him that there was nothing left for him to do but to build the
strongest tower he could, in the safest place he could, and then stay in
it and try to keep himself from his enemies.
"So Vortigern hunted all over the island to find the best place to build
his tower, and he decided that the best place was Snowdon. But when his
workmen began to build there was more trouble. No matter how much they
built in a day, it all fell down in the night, and the next day they had
to begin all over again. When that had gone on for awhile Vortigern
called his wise men together again and asked them what was the matter.
"The wise men did not know in the least, but they tried to look wiser
than they had ever looked before in their lives, and they said that in a
few days they would find out. Then they got together, away from the
King, and talked it all over and tried to make up their minds why the
King's tower would not stand. I don't know all the absurd ways that
they had of thinking that they found out things, but the one that they
believed in the most was studying the stars. So they studied the stars
as hard as ever they could, but not a thing could they find out from
them about the King's tower and why it would not stand. But they were
dreadfully scared by something else that they thought they saw in the
stars. This was that every one of them would finally be brought to his
death by a child who never had a father. Then one of them, who was a
little brighter than the others, said: 'If we cannot do anything for the
King, perhaps we can do something for ourselves. Let us try to kill
this child who never had a father, before he kills us. Let us tell the
King that we have found out from the stars that his tower will stand, if
he mixes the mortar with the blood of a child who never had a father.
Then he will find the child and kill him and we shall be safe."
"They all thought that this was a good plan, so they went and told the
King that he must find a child who never had a father and mix his blood
into the mortar. So the King sent out messengers in every direction to
hunt for a child who never had a father. As I told you at first, Merlin
was a child then, and perhaps you remember that I told you a long time
ago that nobody ever knew who Merlin's father was, unless, as some
people said, he was the son of a devil. Well, one day two of
Vortigern's messengers came to the town where Merlin lived, and Merlin
and some other children were playing in the street.